


The Damage Done

by valenstyne



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, M/M, fumbling towards slash, mentions of drug use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-08
Updated: 2013-05-08
Packaged: 2017-12-10 20:06:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/789641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valenstyne/pseuds/valenstyne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-"Jones", Reid tells Morgan something important. Alternately: The first step is admitting you have a problem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Damage Done

Reid stops you right off the jet back from New Orleans, pulls you away from the rest of the team on the tarmac and asks if you can go somewhere and talk. You say yes, of course, and you’re not surprised when you end up at the nearest Starbucks, watching across the table as Reid pours half a dozen packets of sugar into sixteen ounces of coffee. He’s clearly uneasy, not looking you in the eyes, and you brace yourself for whatever’s coming, whatever secret has been eating him from the inside out for the past few weeks.

When he finally starts to talk, words coming quiet and so fast you can barely keep up, what he says is nothing you could have predicted. He tells you about Tobias Hankel, about endless hours tied to a chair in the dark and the cold, about needles and Dilaudid and “I tried to talk to him, Morgan, I tried,” and then he gets sidetracked (on purpose?), rattling off a string of statistics about addiction until you cut in with a question you already know the answer to. “Reid—what are you telling me, man?”

He bites his lip, internal conflict so plain on his face it’s like you can hear him thinking, and then he sighs, rolls up his sleeve and rests his elbow on the table. And yeah, you figured out pretty quick where this was going, it shouldn’t shock you to be proved right, but it still hits you like a sucker punch.

Because those, those are _track marks_ , on Reid’s _arm_ , and that’s just. _Wrong._

You stare, mouth gone dry, clenching your fists on the table so you won’t do something stupid like reach out and grab him. “Does—” Your voice sounds strange, and you have to stop and take a breath, get yourself under control. “Does the team—have you told anybody else?”

Reid tugs his sleeve back down, takes a sip of his coffee, eyes still downcast. “Gideon knows.” He sips his coffee again, frowning. “I guess everybody…I guess you all figured out there was something wrong, huh?”

“Yeah,” you say, thinking of how irritable he’s been with Emily, the way her face tightens with hurt and worry like he’s slapped her every time they talk. “You’ve been pretty bitchy lately, you know.”

A smile twitches at the corner of his mouth, there and gone again but you take it as a good sign. “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” you say, even though this is not really okay at all. Nothing is okay if Reid’s not okay. You should be saying something, doing something, _making_ him okay, but you feel powerless, sick, the way you feel when you find a body instead of a living person because you didn’t get there in time, the way you felt in Tobias Hankel’s foul house when you saw Reid on the computer screen. “Are you…” You don’t even know what to ask.

“I’m not in therapy,” Reid says, answering the question you should have asked, “but I’m not—I’m not using right now. I mean, not for a few days. I…” He trails off, staring into his coffee.

“Damn, Reid,” you mutter. Silence settles over the table, tense and oppressive. You stand it for maybe five seconds. “Hey. Will you promise me something?”

“Anything,” he says immediately, looking at you for the first time.

“Promise me you’ll let me know if there’s something I can do for you.” You have said variations of this many times, to many people, and you have always meant it, but never quite this much. “If you want to talk, or hang out, or whatever. You could come over sometime and we could, I don’t know, watch football. Just tell me if you—if you need me.”

Reid smiles for real. “‘Watch _football_ ’?” he repeats, arching one eyebrow.

“Hey, just a thought.” You smile back, kind of forced. “Seriously, though.”

“I promise,” he says quietly. There’s a pause, and you study him intently, searching his face for any sign that he’s being less than sincere. Reid just looks steadily back at you until you’re satisfied you can trust him (but that’s stupid, you’ve always trusted him), and then he says “It’s been a long couple of days. You should probably go home and get some sleep.”

It’s your turn to raise your eyebrows at him now. “ _I_ should get some sleep? What about you, pretty boy?”

Reid lifts his coffee meaningfully, and you find yourself momentarily distracted by the way his long fingers wrap around the cup, how fragile his hands look. “I’m not tired. Actually, studies have shown that human sleep needs vary—”

“All right, all right.” You cut him off because you know it’s what he expects you to do, and because you can tell he’s trying to get rid of you. And hell, you are pretty worn out, your body heavy with the bone-deep weariness that always comes after the adrenaline rush of the case. You can’t leave, though, without asking Reid, just in case, “Are you gonna be all right?”

“I’m _fine_ ,” he says, regarding you over the rim of his cup with something between exasperation and fondness. “I’m not going to shoot up in the middle of a Starbucks, Morgan.”

“Okay, that’s not funny,” you say, but you’re still smiling a little as you stand up from the booth. If Reid can joke about this, maybe it’s not going to kill him, at least not tonight. “Hey, remember what I told you, okay? You need me, you call me.”

“I will,” Reid says. “Don’t worry,” he adds.

Don’t worry, you repeat to yourself as you head for the door, glancing over your shoulder one last time. Reid is rummaging in his bag, pulling out a sheaf of papers and spreading them on the table. It’s typical Reid, coffee in one hand and something academic in the other, hair falling across his face, button-down shirt a little too big on his bony shoulders, and it’s only because you’ve known him as long as you have that you can see anything wrong, tension like an aura around him.

Don’t worry.

Like you have a choice.


End file.
